Nowadays, popularity of winter sports and outdoor life is growing. Due to an increasing need materials of winter outfits and boots especially for winter conditions are developed. However, in cold environmental conditions especially toes are particularly susceptible to losing body temperature and becoming uncomfortably cold. To provide insulation from cold temperatures special winter shoes, such as snow boots, ski boots, slalom boots, some hiking boots and ice skates, are made especially for wintry conditions. Upper parts of winter shoes are usually made of cloth or leather, soles are made of rubber materials, and shoe insoles and liners include padding, artificial fur, fur and/or other materials.
The insulating properties of regular winter shoe materials helps to keep the toes warm in some circumstances, but in freezing conditions or when one is staying a long period in cold conditions body temperature may begin to fall and the insulation in the regular winter shoe may no longer be adequate. In some circumstances, it is advantageous to provide a heat source within a winter shoe, because once a person's feet become too cold, there is a risk of numbness, frostbite, or even hypothermia.
In addition, most of the people in the world population suffer from some sort of foot problems. Foot motion/gait problems reflect to soles, ankles, knees, hips, back, etc; that is why their treatment and prevention is particularly beneficial to the whole human well-being. The load on feet in winter sports is higher than the weight of the body. For example, while skating the ground force may be about 1.5 to 2 times one's body weight. Different (arch) support insoles are available for correcting the foot position. They have been designed to support longitudinal medial and lateral arch but without separately glued wedges they do not actually correct foot position. Wedging is a time-consuming and expensive process. The obtained result depends on the person doing the task and still tends to be rather inaccurate. As another drawback, after gluing the wedges to the soles one cannot take a new mold without first removing the wedges.
There is, therefore, a need for a solution that provides warming for toes, but also provides a perfect match to one's feet by a customizable insole for a shoe or a shoe for minimizing the load on feet.